Shanghai Museum, a museum of ancient Chinese art, possesses a collection of 120,000 precious works of art in 21 different categories. Its rich and high quality collection of ancient Chinese bronze, ceramics, paintings and calligraphy is celebrated around the world.

It was founded and first opened to the public in the building in the former Shanghai Racecourse Clubhouse at 325 W. Nanjing Road in 1952. In 1959 it moved into a 1930s bank building at 16 S. Henan Road. The museum developed very quickly in aspects of acquisition, conservation, research, exhibition, education and cultural exchanges with other institutes.

In 1993, with the great support of the Shanghai municipal government, it obtained a piece of land in the very center of the city, on the People’s Square, and the project of establishing a new museum building began. The construction of the building took three years. Its first three galleries of bronze, ceramics and sculpture opened in December 1995 and the other eight galleries opened for its inauguration on October 12th, 1996.

The 29.5 metres high new building has a construction space of 39,200 square metres. Its unique architectural form of a round top with a square base symbolizes the ancient Chinese philosophy that the square earth is under the round sky. In addition to the eleven galleries of museum’s permanent collection, it also has three special temporary exhibition halls to exhibit worldwide fine art collections and new archaeological discoveries.

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Virtual Collection of Masterpieces (VCM) is about sharing. Objects that are physically far apart and spread in museum collections all over the Eurasian continent are brought together in the virtual world.

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